Breathing Techniques For Abdominal Exercises

Yoga means perfect union, and the exercises of yoga bring about perfect union of body and mind. Pranayama is an essential part of all yoga exercises. Pranayama focuses on correct breathing techniques.

These techniques are important for many reasons. Correct breathing allows maximum intake of oxygen, which then reaches all parts of the body and nourishes them, thus leading to a healthy body. Correct breathing techniques also allow the right contraction and expansion of muscles thus making them more supple, flexible, and also stronger and more balanced.

It is therefore important that you should breathe in and out, according to the instructions specified.

All yoga exercises for the abdominals specify that you must breathe out when you lower your legs. There are many reasons for this.

The abdominal muscles are central to all muscles, and are used for performing many activities, right from helping us to get out of bed, to defecate, in childbirth; and even though we are not actually conscious of it, in coughing, vomiting, sitting down or getting up from a sitting posture. In fact, weak abdominal muscles are the cause of many physical problems.

The abdomen is also the key to our mind and emotions. “Gut feeling” is an important part of our mental and emotional make-up. So it is essential that we connect effectively to our guts or abdomen for a balanced body and mind.

Yoga focuses not just on making the abdominal muscles strong, but also makes them flexible and springy. Yoga is not about getting ‘washboard abs’ or tight abdominal muscles; it is about getting abdominal muscles which are soft, supple and flexible enough to allow you to breathe in deeply and then contract the muscles, when you are required to do so.

Breathing out when you lower your legs helps to relax the muscles of the abdomen in this particular position, and this in turn helps to make them stronger. If your muscles are tense, you cannot strengthen them. Yoga does not create tension and stiffening, instead it helps to release tension and create flexibility.

In supine yoga poses, it is even more essential to have strong abdominal muscles. If the muscles of the abdomen are not strong, we tend to compensate this lack by using our back muscles. In a supine leg raise, if the abdominal muscles are weak, the action will be supported by the back muscles and lead to injury.

Breathing out when lowering the legs softens the abdominal muscles and this in turns leads to correct alignment of the body, especially the spine.

That is why yoga advocates breathing out while lowering the legs. The end result is an elastic and springy, but supple and strong abdominal muscle.